Michael Gove addresses delegates at the 2015 Conservative Party Conference in Manchester AFP

For a Conservative Justice Secretary looking to fire up the faithful at the party conference there are three words that have always done trick: Human Rights Act.

So it is all the more surprising that those were the three words that were noticeably absent from Michael Gove's speech to delegates in Manchester today.

When he was appointed to the job by David Cameron after the election the Prime Minister made clear that scrapping the 'hated' legislation would be top of his new Justice Secretary's agenda.

But the admirably independent Mr Gove has had other ideas. He wants to be a reforming Justice Secretary- but his plans for reform are rather different from those that his party might have hoped for.

He wants to concentrate his energies on changing Britain's prison system: selling off outdated Victorian institutions; giving new powers to prison governors to innovate to cut reoffending and most importantly put eduction, training and skills at the heart of the prison system.